


There Are No Rules

by ryeloza



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22763242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryeloza/pseuds/ryeloza
Summary: April knows the best reason to form an alliance is to mess with someone's head.
Relationships: Andy Dwyer/April Ludgate, Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt
Kudos: 21





	There Are No Rules

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to fill the trope "forming an alliance" for trope bingo back in the day. This was also written before we had any canon about future offspring.

April could still remember the first time she realized that there were advantages to being older and smarter than her sister. It was distinctly different than Natalie simply not fighting back, like that time April drew all over her face with permanent marker. This was manipulative. This was mixing chocolate milk with orange juice and convincing Natalie to drink it; this was tricking her into believing a monster lived in the toilet; this was getting Natalie to pour her apple juice on their parents' bed and take the blame without question.  
  
At age four, April learned that little sisters existed primarily as entertainment, a better way to exercise her creativity. But as much as she appreciated the power, sometimes she wished Natalie would push back just a little.  
  
And, of course, eventually she did.  
  
The fact that Natalie did not remain young and naïve forever only upped the ante. Once she caught on, the game became better than April ever imagined—more challenging and dangerous the older they got. Natalie fused pieces of Velcro to April's hair in the middle of the night, and April retaliated by hiding one shoe of each pair of Natalie's; Natalie played with their mother's makeup and told her that April told her to, and April dumped glue in the laundry detergent and blamed Natalie. At one point, the height of their inclination to blame one another for purposeful misdeeds, their parents simply began to punish both of them.  
  
Together, they'd cut the toes off of every pair of their dad's socks.  
  
There were no rules.  
  
As it turned out, uniting when you and your sister were both evil geniuses was perhaps more fun than simply screwing with one another.  
  
And screwing with people other than their parents was unparalleled entertainment.  
  
High school, for instance, improved significantly once Natalie got there. They marked the occasion by switching class schedules for the first two weeks of school, only to convince their teachers they'd each been there the whole time once they returned to their assigned classes. Once they'd gone on a double date with a pair of boys, and Natalie had pretended to be deaf, leaving April to translate her fake sign language. Individually, they freaked people out; together they were feared. By the time April graduated, she had manipulation and terror down to a science. Messing with her family, teachers, and classmates turned to messing with her coworkers, and even without Natalie, she was masterful at her craft.  
  
The only problem was, the older she got, the fewer opportunities seemed to arise. Suddenly people—and not just her parents—were rolling their eyes with fond exasperation more often than they studied her with fear. She and Andy lived alone, and he'd never been more than genuinely entertained by her. She no longer even really had Natalie, long her best foe and ally, as their lives continued to move in different directions.  
  
So, really, this was inevitable.  
  
And Ben and Leslie should have known it.  
  
After all, what else was she supposed to do with their four-year-old daughter? Yeah, they had a ridiculous number of games and puzzles and toys, and Andy had been gleefully participating in a session of finger painting, but she'd also been forced to watch _Dora the Explorer,_ and there was only so much of Boots she could stomach.  
  
Really, it had started innocently.  
  
"Hey," she'd said, trying to talk loudly enough to cover the incessant, repetitiveness of that dumb singing map. "Why don't we paint Andy instead of the paper?"  
  
Andy had laughed, immediately smearing a streak of blue paint across his nose, and the action had been enough to wipe the smidgen of uncertainty from Abby's eyes. Within minutes, Andy was a giant blob of color, and paint was spread well out of the designated area of newspaper Abby had insisted they put out before they started.  
  
Just like that.  
  
It was that easy.  
  
As easy as it had been to convince Natalie to drink chocolate milk-orange juice.  
  
And, April had thought maniacally, Ben made the best face when someone screwed with him.  
  
"Hey, Abby," she'd said, the slightest smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "You know what else would be fun?"  
  
And now, even though it was six thirty in the morning and the incessant pounding on the front door had interrupted a pretty heavy make-out session with her husband, April knew taking Abby under her wing was well worth the sacrifice.  
  
Ben was making that face.  
  
And his indignant yelling was even funnier than she remembered.  
  
Particularly with a dragon drawn on his cheek.  
  
"What else did you convince her to do, April?" He ran a hand through his hair, and April realized there was a complete garden of flowers doodled across his fingers as well. "Leslie has so much glitter paint in her hair she looks like a disco ball!"  
  
April shrugged, actually struggling to hide her delight. God, she hoped Leslie didn't manage to wash that out before work.  
  
"Weren't you just bragging last week about how artistic she is?"  
  
"This—" Ben pointed at the giant dragon that began on his forehead and wrapped down his cheek all the way to the tip of his chin, "—was not her idea!"  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"Because I know my daughter. Sneaking into our room in the middle of the night to use us as a canvas for an art project? April, you once covered my bed in Cheetos while I was sleeping and I woke up in a mess of cheese dust. No. This was you. I know it."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
They stared at one another, Ben fuming and April trying not to laugh at his glitter green eyebrows. She could see him turning this over in his mind, trying to come up with a way to get her to admit it, but clearly the kid had stuck to her word not to rat her out and he had no proof she'd told Abby to do this.  
  
She was still the master.  
  
Silently, April pulled her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket and snapped a picture of Ben before he could protest.  
  
"You should get one of Leslie, too," she said, tucking the phone away and leaning against the door. "I know how you like to record these precious moments."  
  
"April—"  
  
"Hey, babe, what's going on?"'  
  
April swiveled around, putting up a hand to try to stop Andy in his tracks, but it was too late. Ben's mouth had dropped open, but Andy outright laughed, practically doubled over the second he caught sight of Ben. "Dude! Your face!"  
  
"Andy…What?"  
  
"You look so stupid. Oh my god."  
  
Ben turned to April, still agog at Andy, who had apparently forgotten that every inch of available skin was covered in paint. If Ben was a sketch on a napkin, Andy was a life-size painting, complete with multi-colored spots and a rainbow on each arm.  
  
"Did you—What—Who—" Ben shook his head in bewilderment. "Andy, you're covered in paint."  
  
"Huh?" Andy glanced down at himself and chuckled. "Oh! Right. Dude, your kid is the best. Look at this awesome cow." He lifted his t-shirt, revealing a slightly smeared cow grazing on his stomach. "I didn't know she could do dragons too."  
  
Ben just stared.  
  
"Hey, you want a Pop Tart or something?" Andy slung an arm around her waist and yawned. "We've got like six flavors."  
  
Ben looked back and forth between them, opened his mouth to say something, and then changed his mind. Without another word, he turned and walked away.  
  
"Hey," called April. She could feel a triumphant grin overtaking her face, not able to stop herself from reveling in her own success. She wondered when Ben would discover the plate of chopped onions they'd left under the bed. "Let us know if you want us to babysit again."  
  
Ben turned to glare at her, a clear indication that babysitting wouldn't happen again anytime soon, but April knew him and Leslie well enough to know she'd get another chance.  
  
Maybe she'd invite Natalie along next time.


End file.
